Would you like to buy this print? Every week, there will be ten prints (and that’s it, forever) available for $8 each (including shipping). Each 5x5” print is numbered and signed. Be sure to choose “WEEKLY PRINTS ONLY” for your shipping option at checkout. Last week’s sold out, so hop on while you can! Here’s that link again.
A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
I want to talk to you about your goals.
I’m a fairly goal-oriented person. I did Teach for America in 2008 (usually I’m ashamed to admit this, but we are friends, and I’m working on being brave), which is the same as being in any hipster startup company ever, and so I am slightly addicted to setting “SMART” goals for myself. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based. I truly resent the amount of brain real estate that is permanently allocated to stupid acronyms because of Teach for America [TFA].) I write them down, I backwards-plan around them, and in general, I achieve them. Then I set new ones. This makes me feel, basically, high. There is some serious dopamine to be had from goal-achievement.
It sounds kinda great, but it’s not. The highs are harder to achieve and shorter-lived every time. That’s addiction for you; dopamine consumption can always be exploited. It’s just that in a productivity-obsessed world, people act like any kind of work addiction is not only totally OK, it’s admirable and inherently good. So you can look around, see people who have work addictions, and use that as evidence that whatever you are doing in your life is not good enough.
This is why today I want to talk to you about your goals, and suggest that while I love and respect whatever goals you have set for yourself, I also love and respect the NON-goals you have, and I love and respect and even APPRECIATE the times you DON’T meet your goals, and the times you’re not “on-track” to achieving anything.
I’m not exactly sure where you are in your goal-setting life right now, but it is safe to say that most goals are about getting more, doing better, and reaching higher. That’s fine! But it’s also fine to be staying where you are. Staying where you are is a too-often unsung pleasure.
For example: take any activity you engage in just because. Maybe you like to draw flowers in the margins of your journals. Without needing to get any better at flower-drawing, you might do it every day. You’re not going to sell your flower drawings. You’re not going to post them on Instagram and try to get 10,000 likes for them. You’re not going to compare your flower drawings to other people’s flower drawings. You’re just drawing flowers to draw flowers because it feels nice to draw flowers. That is an incredible thing, my friend.
If you are having trouble coming up with anything you do in your life that isn’t connected to a goal, may I recommend that you get intentional about being less intentional? Pick up a hobby that you do just for you. Make pasta sauces, knit, swim in the lake, learn to identify plants or birds, color in a coloring book, grow micro greens in a lunch tray, write letters to friends, mend socks, doodle, play an instrument, sing in the car. Do not set a goal. Do not create an achievement chart. Do not check back in in a year to see how much better you are at your hobby. Be mediocre at something, with no purpose but to enjoy it. Don’t even put it on your social media story! This thing can belong only to you.
Think about what in your life that are already working, and consider how beautiful it is that you don’t need to improve. The easy friendships with people you don’t talk to all that often, with whom you have minimal conflict. Your pets. The smoothie you make almost every morning. The fact that you shower exactly the amount that you want to be showering. The way you arrange your pillows at night. Your makeup routine. Your brand loyalty to a pair of shoes. Your competence at taking the train. Take some time to celebrate the things in your life that can stay the same. We focus so much energy on making things better, doing things more, and maximizing our lives. It’s exhausting! So much about what you are already doing is amazing. You are already surviving. It’s already enough.
Love,
Sophie
Add this to your to-do list.
Organize just one drawer.
A drawing.
I drew this in August of 2014, and I remember feeling proud of it. I drew it with a Micron on a piece of printer paper, and then used these fat Prismacolor markers to add color. I had never done this before. I did four different color palettes, and it was the first time I’d used color palettes. I only kept one — whenever I was really broke, I’d sell all my art for $5 or less per piece. But I was fond of these pieces, and I kept the orangey-pink one.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about pregnancy. Skip it if you don’t want to read about pregnancy.)
I wake up every 90 minutes of every night (because peeing and carpal tunnel), no matter what. I am always so grateful when I’ve had an innocuous dream that doesn’t make it hard to fall back asleep again. But way more commonly I dream about my exes. I have two exes (one ex-boyfriend, one ex-friend) with whom I really hate how things ended up. I’m not really on speaking terms with either of them. As a general aside, I’ve done some reflection on my habits with exes. At the end of the day, I have never been great at figuring out boundaries that are healthy for myself, but I am pretty good at respecting OTHER people’s boundaries. (This is true for me at age 35. At age 25 I was absolutely terrible at respecting other people’s boundaries, and I can fully own that now.) I always want to stay friends with exes. It is among the main reasons I’m polyamorous. I can’t understand how you can love someone with so much of your being and then not continue to be in relationship with them, just because you stopped sleeping with them. Anyway, last night I dreamed about the ex-boyfriend. Early in my pregnancy, I dreamed about him every single night. But then, amazingly, serendipitously, he happened to call me one afternoon three months into my pregnancy — for the first time in literal years. When I answered the phone, he started talking quickly about something I didn’t understand, it became rapidly clear that he had meant to call another Sophie, and didn’t yet realize that he was speaking with me, his ex-Sophie. But he acted like he was glad for the mistake (an obvious lie), and we briefly caught up, and I told him I was pregnant. I thought that had solved the dream problem — I didn’t dream about him again for months. Then last night he popped up again, and I woke up at 3:45 wondering if it was a good or a bad idea to see if he had posted anything on social media in a while. (He does not post things on social media.) I stayed up for two hours thinking about him and wondering about him and wandering down mental backroads where it was unpleasant to hang out and nothing was clear. Is it better or worse that he does not post things on social media? I can’t say.
But I dropped my headphones on the ground while I tossed and turned and thought about him, and this felt like the end of the world, because I truly feel like touching the floor is tantamount to lifting an 800-pound gorilla over my head these days.
Extras.
Sammi and I licensed a New Yorker cartoon image to a knitting company called Row House Yarn, and they offered to send us free yarn and/or knitting kits. I got a baby blanket kit, and it is so incredibly lovely. I hope I get into knitting. I’m putting this out into the world.
Chicago’s Sarah Squirm (Sherman) is going to be on SNL this season! Having spent some time with Sarah, I can’t think of a single person on earth more worthy of this huge career news. She is a true original, and then also somehow so genuinely kind?! Good job, everyone.
Also good news: Jo Firestone, my favorite comedian, has a comedy special coming out (“Good Timing”) where she teaches senior citizens how to do standup and it looks like it will make us all cry and laugh.
It’s fall migration. Learn about birds.
The underrated / wonderful Subsonic Eye released two new singles this week, and they are terrific.
I am pretty sure one of our newish Swedish flower hens laid her first egg. Here’s a photo.